Pope Benedict XVI (far right) on the day of his ordination 6/21/51"It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered with infinite love." —POPE BENEDICT XVI, —Spe Salvi, n. 37
No truer words were ever spoken. Persecution is coming, perhaps not to every part of every nation, but to the Christian who lives a Christian life, very real persecution is coming. Can't you feel the wicked wind coming? The secret is to not be of this world, be unattached to your things for they are just so much rubbish. Cast yourself upon the feet of Jesus, call upon Mary - bow down to the ground at her feet before the cross of Christ and the floodgates of mercy will be open to you! Joy is found in embracing the crosses in your life!
"Turn me over, I am done on this side!"
~St. Lawrence as he was being burned to death
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5 comments:
No persecution is "coming".
Persecution has been, is now, and evermore shall be.
As long as Catholics are in the world, they had better expect to be persecuted by the world. The kingdom of this world is the natural enemy of the Kingdom of God. If you are persecuted, just count it as a sign that you are doing your job.
Irene, I see your point. I believe, and I pray I am wrong - that currently in the western world the majority of persecution that takes place in covert, hushed whispers, perhaps the job assignment or promotion you are passed over but you never know for sure...that sort of persecution.
I believe we will enter into a time soon where the persecution of Christians and perhaps Jews will be overt, out in the open. We will be seen as the enemy because we will cling to the certainly of the existence of right and wrong, not everything will be relative to us. Due to this we will be disturbers of the peace - which will be a false peace. The time will come when to imprison, persecute and possibly kill a Christian will be seen as a good thing.
Again, I pray I an wrong and this will not happen in our lifetimes.
From World Net Daily
Doctor-assisted suicide
ruled 'a patient's right'
'We put animals out of their misery
– we can do it for human beings'
Posted: December 06, 2008
By Drew Zahn
A state district court judge ruled yesterday that patients have a right to doctor-assisted suicide.
Montana's First District Court Judge Dorothy McCarter, the Associated Press reports, declared in the case of Baxter et al. v. Montana that mentally competent, terminally ill Montanans may self-administer life-ending medication and that doctors who prescribe such medications need not fear criminal prosecution.
Robert Baxter, 75, a retired truck driver from Billings who suffers from lymphocytic leukemia, filed the lawsuit along with four physicians in the state's district court system on Nov. 1, 2007. They were aided in the case by the assisted suicide advocacy group Compassion & Choices, formerly known as the Hemlock Society.
"It's always been a very important thing with me," says Baxter in Compassion & Choices Magazine. "I've just watched people suffer so badly when they died, and it goes on every day. You can just see it in their eyes: 'Why am I having to go through this terrible part of my life, when we do it for animals? We put them out of their misery.'
"I just feel if we can do it for animals," Baxter said, "we can do it for human beings."
Baxter's lawsuit asserts that Montana residents have a right under the state constitution's privacy and dignity clauses to control their own death and seeks a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief to prevent the doctors from being prosecuted should they move ahead with the suicides of Baxter and another patient, Steven Stoelb, whose name was dropped from the case due to disputed facts of his disease.
Kathryn Tucker, director of legal affairs, Compassion & Choices
"A mentally competent, terminally ill Montanan should have the right to choose a peaceful death, when confronted by death," Kathryn Tucker, Compassion & Choices director of legal affairs, told KTVQ-TV, Billings.
But Montana Assistant Attorney General Anthony Johnston disagrees.
Johnston told the television station, "The laws governing the medical profession say the medical profession is to heal, not to kill."
Attorney Mark Connell, who filed the suit on Baxter's behalf, told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, "The question in our minds is whether the Montana State Constitution's explicit guarantees of privacy and human dignity give the patient the choice to decide how his life is going to end."
Indeed, the Montana Constitution does have clauses regarding privacy and dignity, including the statement in Article II, Section 4: "The dignity of the human being is inviolable."
Compassion & Choices argues that those constitutional guarantees imply a right of patients to decide with their doctors how to achieve a peaceful death.
But some say extending those guarantees to cover physician-assisted suicide is manipulating the state constitution's clauses to create a phantom "right."
"They have based their lawsuit on the right to privacy in the Montana Constitution," writes Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com. "Originally meant as a means of protecting citizens from governmental snooping, state courts, including the Montana Supreme Court, have misused the clause to create an unlimited right to abortion. Pro-life advocates fear the same problem will occur vis-a-vis assisted suicide."
Wesley J. Smith, an attorney who specializes in bioethics issues, told LifeNews that a Montana Supreme Court decision in 1999 did, in fact, stretch the privacy and dignity clauses to create a virtually unlimited abortion "right," but that the courts ought to defer to the state legislature's already created laws on assisted suicide.
"It should be hard for a court to throw out a law passed by the legislature of the kind that has never been found in any court in any litigation to be unconstitutional," Smith said. "Still, the case is certainly no sure thing – either way. But I do know it is likely to be a legal fight to the finish that could eventually grab the attention of the entire world."
If Judge McCarter's decision in favor of Baxter's case holds through possible appeals and is enacted by the state, Montana will join Washington and Oregon as the only states in the U.S. that allow doctors to help terminally ill patients end their lives.
The time is coming when euthanasia will become involuntary and when Christians are put to death for the "good of the State."
Sanctus Belle: I agree with you. I think serious and overt persecution is coming soon. We need to be ready.
Ladies, ladies. No insult intended, but where have you been living?
In my lifetime I have seen all of the persecutions you list. Many of them happen to be ongoing. Christians have been and are being "put to death for the 'good of the State'." Involuntary euthanasia was pioneered in the US -- that is where Hitler got the idea.
Jews? They have been persecuted continuously for at least 3,500 years. And of course those persecutions continue today.
Covert persecution? Surely. But I can remember vividly when Catholic children routinely were the target of vicious taunting and bullying by protestant children... not all that long ago. And in their turn, the Catholic children persecuted the Jewish children.
Persecution is not some future threat -- it is a given throughout history. If we ourselves, personally, happen to become targets of persecution in the future, it will be nothing new -- just new to us personally.
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